Speakers

We are pleased to have the following speakers join us at Disrupt SF. Speakers and guests will be announced on a rolling basis. Please check back for announcements.

SPEAKER SUGGESTIONS: We have limited panel slots available but always appreciate recommendations that align with our content agenda. Please click HERE for form submissions. We regret that we are unable to follow up on all submissions but will be in touch if we see a specific fit.

Michael is a Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Michael was previously Twitter’s Vice President of Engineering. Before that he lead the application platform and services development for Palm’s next-generation Palm webOS platform. He has extensive experience in building technically challenging web-based applications and services.

Before joining Palm, Michael was the general manager of .NET Online Services at Microsoft, where he led efforts to deliver a services platform that enabled the development of large-scale Internet-based services. Prior to Microsoft, he co-founded Passenger Inc., where he served as chairman and led the development of the company’s consumer marketing SAAS platform. Michael also founded Composite Software, creator of industry-leading enterprise information integration software, where he served as the CEO/CTO.

Michael holds a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from California Polytechnic State University, and has completed coursework toward a Ph.D. at the University of Washington.

Jessica Alba is an actress, activist, mother, wife and entrepreneur. Known throughout the world for her acting career, the mother of two daughters launched The Honest Company in January 2012. In an industry consumed by toxic and harmful products, The Honest Company responds to the need for safe, effective, and affordable products for the home, children, and babies. Honest conveniently delivers fashionable, eco-friendly products that “families need most” right to your homes. Ranging from diapers and wipes to household cleaning detergents and a full line of body care products for children, all of the products were created with children’s well being in mind and designed to represent a friendly, healthy and sustainable future.

Jessica fell in love with acting at a very early age and became active professionally at the age of 12. After studying at the Atlantic Theatre Company with founders William H. Macy and David Mamet, she starred in James Cameron’s “Dark Angel,” gaining worldwide recognition. Her first starring role in a major studio film was the 2003 release, “Honey,” Universal Pictures’ contemporary urban drama that grossed over $60 million worldwide.

J. Michael Arrington (born March 13, 1970 in Huntington Beach, California) is a serial entrepreneur and the founder of TechCrunch, a blog covering startups and technology news. Arrington attended Claremont McKenna College (BA Economics, 1992) and Stanford Law School (JD, 1995) and practiced as a corporate and securities lawyer at two law firms: O’Melveny & Myers and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. His clients included idealab, Netscape, Pixar, Apple and a number of startups, venture funds and investment banks. He also co-authored a book on initial public offerings.

In 1999, he left WSGR to join RealNames as VP of Business Development and General Counsel. In 2000, he cofounded Achex, an online payments company, that was later acquired by First Data Corp for $32 million. Achex is now the back end infrastructure to Western Union online. Arrington worked in an operational role at a Carlyle backed startup in London, founded and ran two companies in Canada (Zip.ca and Pool.com), was COO to a Kleiner-backed company called Razorgator, and consulted to other companies, including Verisign. In May 2008, Time Magazine named Michael Arrington as one of the world’s 100 most influential people.

Cyan is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Zivity, and also a contributing writer for TechCrunch.

Cyan was born into a family of artists and grew up around paint, photography and music. From these beginnings, she developed a life-long appreciation for the arts that eventually inspired the Zivity platform. This platform she created is a new way for artists to profitably connect directly with their fans in the rapidly changing digital media landscape.

Cyan has held many leadership roles throughout her career, from leading technical operations teams in an enterprise software company to helping women master technology as CTO of a nonprofit organization.

As a side note, Cyan donates money every year to the world juggling federation, women’s division. She currently lives in Half Moon Bay, California with her husband Scott Banister.

Marc Benioff is chairman and CEO of salesforce.com. He founded the company in 1999 with a vision to create an on-demand information management service that would replace traditional enterprise software technology. Benioff is regarded as the leader of what he has termed “The End of Software,” the now-proven belief that multitenant, cloud computing applications democratize information by delivering immediate benefits at reduced risks and costs.

Under Benioff’s direction, salesforce.com has grown from a groundbreaking idea into a publicly traded company that is the leader in enterprise cloud computing. For its revolutionary approach, salesforce.com has received a Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation Award, been lauded as one of Businessweek’s Top 100 Most Innovative Companies, named No. 7 on The Wired 40, and was selected by Forbes as the World’s Most Innovative Company in 2011.

Benioff has been widely recognized for pioneering innovation. In 2010 he was awarded the David Packard Medal of Achievement and was named by Fortune one of the Top 50 People in Business as well as one of the Smartest People in Tech. He has been honored as the San Francisco Business Times Executive of the Year, the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, and the Alumni Entrepreneur of the Year by the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business.

Gina Bianchini is the founder of Mightybell. She is also the co-founder and former CEO of Ning, an online platform for creating your own social network for anything.

Previously, Gina was the Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer at Harmonic Communications. She has also worked as a Director of Business Development and Investor Relations at CKS Group and as a financial analyst at Goldman Sachs.

Nathan is the technical architect behind Airbnb. A pragmatist who translates vision and design into tangible product through fast iterations, Nathan uses data to identify and pursue high-growth opportunities. Under his leadership, the engineering team has developed a robust, secure marketplace which now facilitates a massive amount of commerce each day.

Nathan got an early start in business and technology when he founded an online marketing company while still in high school. Since then he has worked a program manager at Microsoft, engineer at OPNET Technologies, and lead developer at Batiq. Nathan graduated with a degree in Computer Science from Harvard University.

The Honorable Cory A. Booker is the Mayor of Newark, New Jersey. He took the oath of office as Mayor of New Jersey’s largest city on July 1, 2006 following a sweeping electoral victory. Elected with a clear mandate for change, Mayor Booker has begun work on realizing a bold vision for the city. Newark’s mission is to set a national standard for urban transformation by marshalling its resources to achieve security, economic abundance and an environment that is nurturing and empowering for individuals and families.

Mayor Booker and his Administration have made meaningful strides towards achieving the City’s mission. Newark, New Jersey is a national leader among large cities for reductions in shootings and murders, achieving decreases of more than 40% in gun violence. Radical transformation of the Newark Police Department under Mayor Booker’s leadership, together with the deployment of over 100 surveillance cameras throughout City, has led to Newark setting the nationwide pace for crime reduction.

Mayor Booker’s political career began in 1998, after serving as Staff Attorney for the Urban Justice Center in Newark. He rose to prominence as Newark’s Central Ward Councilman. During his four years of service from 1998-2002, then-Councilman Booker earned a reputation as a leader with innovative ideas and bold actions, from increasing security in public housing to building new playgrounds.

John Borthwick is CEO of betaworks. betaworks is new form of internet media company. Prior to betaworks John was Senior Vice President of Alliances and Technology Strategy for Time Warner Inc.

John’s company, WP-Studio, founded in 1994, was one of the first content studios in New York’s Silicon Alley. John holds an MBA from Wharton (1994) and an undergraduate degree BA in Economics from Wesleyan University (1987).

Roelof Botha is a partner at Sequoia Capital focusing on financial services, cloud computing, bioinformatics, consumer internet and mobile companies. Roelof sits on the boards of Aliph, Eventbrite, Mahalo, Meebo, Nimbula, Square, TokBox, Tumblr, Unity and Xoom. Roelof is a champion of consumer Web plays and considers himself as “just another consumer”.

Roelof’s previous investments at Sequoia include Insider Pages and YouTube.

Prior to joining Sequoia Capital in 2003, Roelof served as the Chief Financial Officer of PayPal during its sale to eBay. Earlier, he worked as a management consultant for McKinsey & Company. Roelof is a certified actuary (Fellow of the Faculty of Actuaries).

Dana Brunetti is the president of Trigger Street Productions, a production company founded by Kevin Spacey in 1997. Also an innovator in social networking, Brunetti launched Trigger Street Labs in 2002 – a online platform for feedback and exposure for undiscovered writing and filmmaking talent.

In 2009, he produced the film The Social Network, the story of how Facebook was created. The film was directed by David Fincher, written by Aaron Sorkin and based on Ben Mezrich’s Book, The Accidental Billionaires. This year, he is producing Captain Phillips Starring Tom Hanks and directed by Paul Greengrass as well as the new streaming-only Netflix show House of Cards with David Fincher and Kevin Spacey. In July of this year, it was announced that he and Michael De Luca would produce the 50 Shades of Grey film adaptation.

He also worked with Mezrich in 2008, when he produced the film 21, which was based off his New York Times bestselling book Bringing Down The House. He has produced the films Fanboys, Shrink, the Emmy-nominated Bernard and Doris, Casino Jack, Mini’s First Time, The Sasquatch Gang, and the documentaries Uncle Frank, and Rebuilds: A Year at Ground Zero.

A true visionary, Leah Busque (@labusque) is the founder of TaskRabbit.com, the pioneer in service networking. Now an industry-wide concept, service networking describes the productive power of a web-based, social-networked community. Since its founding in 2008, Leah has grown the company to more than 50 employees and has expanded the service to Austin, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, Orange County, San Antonio, and San Francisco.

Prior to founding TaskRabbit, Leah was a Software Engineer at IBM, working in the Messaging and Collaboration Software Development group. A rare blend of product talent and business savvy, Leah was recently named one of the “100 Most Creative People In Business” by Fast Company and one of the “15 Women To Watch In 2012” by Inc Magazine.

Bill CampbellChairman of the Board, Intuit
Board of Directors, Apple

Bill Campbell assumed his role as chairman of the board of directors in August 1998. He previously served as Intuit’s president and chief executive officer from 1994 to 1998 and as chief executive officer from September 1999 until January 2000.

During Campbell’s tenure, Intuit solidified its position as the clear leader in tax, personal finance and small business accounting software. During that time, the company also invented a new class of Web-based finance businesses delivered through Quicken.com, Intuit’s Web site.

For the three years before joining Intuit, Campbell was the president and chief executive officer of GO Corp., a pen-based computing software company. Previously, he founded and served as president and chief executive officer of Claris Corp., which was purchased by Apple Computer Inc. in 1990.

Before starting Claris, Campbell was Apple’s executive vice president, group executive of the United States. He joined Apple in July 1983 as vice president of marketing and added the title of vice president of sales in January 1984. In September 1984, his duties were expanded to include distribution, service and support when he was promoted to executive vice president. In June 1985, Campbell was named group executive of the United States and has served on its board of directors since August 1997.

Wesley Chan is an Investment Partner on the Google Ventures team. He is based out of Seattle, WA. At Google, he is an early employee and fun-loving entrepreneur, where he is tasked with scouting new opportunities and turning them into disruptive billion-dollar businesses. Two of his favorite products he’s founded and launched include Google Analytics and Google Voice. Wesley is a recipient of Google’s founder award–the company’s most prestigious recognition–for leading the development of Google Toolbar and building out Google’s early client efforts. Wesley also holds five US Patents from his work on starting the business for targeted display advertising at Google.

Additionally, Wesley has held positions as a research lead at HP Labs, a Program Manager at Microsoft, and holds both Masters and Bachelors degrees in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from MIT where he did his graduate research at the Media Laboratory. He was selected as a top TR35 young innovator by Technology Review magazine in 2010. Wesley has led numerous investments at Google Ventures, including Firespotter Labs, an consumer product accelerator, and Ipierian, a biopharmaceutical stem-cell company focused on the development of new therapeutics. In his spare time, Wesley also serves as Google’s Chief Photographer Emeritus. His favorite camera is the Canon EOS-5D Mark II.

Based in Palo Alto, California, Jean-Francois “Jeff” Clavier is the Founder and Managing Partner of SoftTech VC, one of the most active seed stage investors in Web 2.0 startups. Since 2004, Jeff has invested 110+ consumer internet startups in areas like social media, monetization, search, gaming or B2B/B2C web services. These investments are typically located in Silicon Valley, New-York and Boulder. With over 20 years of operational, entrepreneurial and venture capital experience, Jeff is able to add relevant perspective and value to his companies as they grow from inception to maturity, and hopefully, success.

In 2007, Jeff was recognized as one of the 13 “Web 2.0 King Makers” by (late) Business 2.0. BusinessWeek named him one of “The 25 Most Influential People on the Web” in 2008, and one of the “Top 25 Angels in Tech” in 2010. He was also nominated in the “Best Angel” category at the Crunchies in 2009 and 2010. He is often noted for his investments in categories such as “passion-centric communities” or online gaming, or for having sold a number of his Web 2.0 startups to the likes of Yahoo, AOL, Intuit or more recently Twitter, Groupon and Facebook.

Matt Cohler is a General Partner at Benchmark Capital. He’s responsible for identifying investment opportunities in Internet-related services, in addition to working closely with companies across the firm’s portfolio.

Previously he served as the VP of Product Management at Facebook, where he led the development of new strategic initiatives for the company. As the seventh employee at Facebook, Matt has worked with the team during many critical growth phases. Previously Matt was Vice President and General Manager at LinkedIn, where he was a member of the founding team. Prior to LinkedIn, Matt was a consultant in McKinsey & Company’s Silicon Valley office and worked in Beijing for AsiaInfo, the Chinese startup that built the infrastructure for the Internet in mainland China. Matt’s writings on the startup economy have been published in Harvard Business Review. He holds a bachelor’s degree with honors and distinction from Yale University.

Tony Conrad is Co-Founder & CEO of about.me (acquired by Aol in December 2010). He is also a Founding Venture Partner at True Ventures where he serves on the Board of Directors of Automattic (WordPress), appssavvy, Coffee & Power, Quarterly, StockTwits, RescueTime, PastFuture (GDGT), KISSmetrics, 20×200, Smarterer, Qualaroo, Trippy and led True’s investment in MakerBot, ToyTalk, Betable and OnTheAir.

Ronald Conway has been an active angel investor for over 15 years. He was the Founder and Managing Partner of the Angel Investors LP funds (1998-2005) whose investments included: Google, Ask Jeeves, Paypal, Good Technology, Opsware, and Brightmail.

Ron was previously with National Semiconductor Corporation in marketing positions from 1973-1979, and Altos Computer Systems as a co-founder, President and CEO from 1979-1990. He eventually took Altos public in 1982 and served as CEO of Personal Training Systems (PTS) from 1991-1995. PTS went on to be acquired by SmartForce/SkillSoft. Ron has served/serves on Boards/Advisory Boards including: Twitter, Digg, Brightmail, Ask Jeeves, Rupture (acquired by EA), Associated Content(acquired by Yahoo!), Facebook, RockYou, ScanScout, Zappos, Trulia, StumbleUpon, Plaxo (acquired by Comcast), Photobucket (acquired by Fox), and Anchor Intelligence (co-founder).

Ron was recently named #6 in Forbes Magazine Midas list of top “deal-makers” in 2008 and is actively involved in numerous philanthropic endeavors. Ron is Vice Chairman of the UCSF Medical Foundation in SF, Board Member of The Tiger Woods Foundation, and SF Homeless Connect, and on the Benefit Committee of Ronald McDonald House, College Track, and the Blacked Eyed Peas-PeaPod Academy Foundation.

Conway is also featured in Gary Rivlin’s book The Godfather of Silicon Valley: Ron Conway and the Fall of the Dot-coms, described as ‘the man who has placed more bets on Internet start-ups than anyone else in Silicon Valley.’

Jim has been following Apple and its products for the last 17 years, first as one of the original members of MacCentral, then at Macworld. He held several positions at Macworld over the 10 years, including his final job as Editor at Large, before leaving in May 2009.

Jim’s work has been in many publications including Macworld, PC World, Computerworld, Macworld UK and many others. He’s also appeared as an expert on several television stations including CNN, Fox, CBS and ABC.

He continues to do radio show interviews, both Internet-based like Your Mac Life and MacNotables and traditional radio.

Jim has been a guitar player for 20 years and records music on his Mac using GarageBand, Logic, Pro Tools, Cubase, Line 6, Native Instruments, IK Multimedia, ToonTrack, FXPansion and a host of other applications.

He previously served as Chief Technology Officer at Facebook, where he oversaw new product development and managed the engineering team. In addition, he guided the site’s architecture and infrastructure to ensure scalability as the site expanded.

Prior to serving as CTO, Adam led the Facebook Platform team and, as an engineer, built the initial infrastructure for news feed, ad targeting and delivery, and worked on scalability and optimization. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the California Institute of Technology.

Allen DeBevoise is the Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of Machinima, Inc. the dominant video entertainment network for serious gamers around the world. Machinima’s global content network features official content from game publishers, television networks and film studios, fan-created gameplay videos and original content, including over 20 original weekly shows and “prime time” live-action episodic series, all aimed at the coveted 18–34 year old male demographic. The number one entertainment channel on YouTube, Machinima reaches over 191 million viewers monthly, and delivers 2.1 billion video views a month, and growing.

Under DeBevoise’s guidance, Machinima has become a major force in reaching core video gamers and young entertainment consumers, because the company is at the cutting edge of on-line video entertainment and the changing experience of gaming. It also enjoys a massive, global, and highly engaged audience.

DeBevoise served on the board of directors of LowerMyBills.com and True/Slant through their respective acquisitions, and currently serves on the board of Dealer.com. He is also an active angel investor in several early stage technology and consumer internet companies.

Jack Dorsey is the creator, co-founder, and Chairman of Twitter, Inc. Originally from St. Louis, Jack’s early fascination for mass-transit and how cities function led him to Manhattan and programming real-time messaging systems for couriers, taxis, and emergency vehicles. Throughout this work, Jack witnessed thousands of workers in the field constantly updating where they were and what they were doing; Twitter is a constrained simplification designed for general usage and extended by the millions of people who make it their own every day.

Jack was recognized as one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people and was named an “outstanding innovator under the age of 35” by MIT’s Technology Review.

Timothy C. Draper is the Founder and a Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. His original suggestion to use “viral marketing” in web-based e-mail to geometrically spread an Internet product to its market was instrumental to the successes of Hotmail and YahooMail, and has been adopted as a standard marketing technique by hundreds of businesses. On behalf of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Tim serves on the boards of DoAt, Glam, Meebo, Prosper, SocialText, and DFJ Plug ‘N Play companies. DFJ’s previous successes include: Skype (EBAY), Overture.com (YHOO), Baidu (BIDU), Parametric Technology (PMTC), Hotmail (MSFT), PLX Technologies (PLXT), Preview Travel (TVLY), Digidesign (AVID), and others.

Malik S. Ducard is the Content Partnerships Director at Google where he is in charge of premium film, TV and new media partnerships for YouTube. Prior to joining YouTube, he served as senior vice president of digital distribution for the Americas at Paramount Pictures and oversaw distribution of films to online, mobile and digital platforms including iTunes, Xbox, Netflix, and a range of mobile, online and device technology partners.

A native of the Bronx, NY, Malik attended the Pomfret School then went on to earn his B.A. degree in Film and African-American Studies in 1995 from Columbia University and then his MBA in 2000 from the University of California, Los Angeles, Anderson School of Management.

Kirk is the COO of Cloudera where he uses his diversified range of technology engineering, marketing, sales and management experience to oversee Cloudera’s business operations. During his nearly 20-year career, Kirk has worked extensively with established companies, high-growth organizations and Fortune 200 accounts, successfully building strategic sales and product divisions, and leading international expansions.

Kirk served as the CEO of PowerFile, Inc, which was successfully sold to Hitachi LG Data Storage, and was CEO of Bang Networks Inc. Prior to joining Bang Networks, Kirk served as VP of North American Field Operations at Inktomi. He came to Inktomi from Network Equipment Technologies, Inc. (NET), where he held executive positions in sales, marketing and professional services. Kirk also worked for IBM in senior sales positions. He holds a BA in mathematics and applied sciences from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Josh founded and sold two successful Internet businesses for a combined $400mm and is now making early stage investments through Freestyle Capital.

Josh is a founding partner in Freestyle Capital, an early stage venture fund focused on the Internet and technology sectors. Mr. Felser was the CEO and co-founder of Crackle (formerly Grouper), an Internet video community, acquired by Sony for $65 million in 2006. Until February of 2001 he was General Manager of AOL Time Warner’s music brands’ Spinner, Winamp and Shoutcast. In October 1997 he became co-founder and President of Spinner.com, a leading Internet music destination until its 1999 purchase by America Online for $320 million. From 1994 to 1996 he was Head of business and product development in Qwest/U.S. West’s Multimedia Group. From 1990 to 1994 he was an executive with News Corp., working with Fox Inc. in Los Angeles and BSkyB in London. Mr. Felser obtained a B.A. in Political Science and Economics from Duke University in 1986 and an M.B.A. in Marketing from Duke’s FUQUA School of Business in 1990.

Jim Goetz is a Partner at Sequoia Capital and is inspired by founders who aim to disrupt the enterprise (Jive Software, Nimble Storage, Palo Alto Networks), or change the mobile landscape (AdMob, Sencha, WhatsApp). He was raised in the Midwest, studied as an engineer, gave up on a PhD to start his career as a rookie product manager at SynOptics (SNPX), and matured into a VP/GM before co-founding VitalSigns (ALU). Both as an entrepreneur and as an investor, Jim is most enthused when teaming with others to turn an authentic idea into a market leading technology company.

Jim joined Sequoia Capital in 2004, and has also led Sequoia’s Investments in Appirio, Barracuda Networks, Clearwell (SYMC), Drawbridge, eMeter (SI), Flite, Metaswitch, Pocket Gems, and Ruckus. Prior to joining Sequoia, Jim served as a General Partner at Accel Partners where he led the investments in BroadJump (MOTV), Entrisphere (ERIC), Peribit (JNPR), RGB, Rhapsody (BRCD), Timetra (ALA) and Topspin (CSCO). Prior to VitalSigns and Synoptics, Jim held various product and marketing positions at AT&T, AT&T Bell Labs, and Digital Equipment. Jim has a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Cincinnati and an MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

Kirsten Green brings 16 years of investment experience to her role as Managing Partner, successfully evaluating and investing in countless consumer oriented businesses, from multi-billion-dollar enterprises to pre-revenue startups. Her ability to draw connections between large and small companies ensures a well-rounded perspective on successful business models, operational and market issues, and consumer trends.

Through her work at Forerunner, she has helped support dozens of innovative product and commerce companies and has invested capital in excess of $25 million. She combines an experience- and thesis-driven approach with a consumer centric view to identify compelling brand platforms and partner with visionary entrepreneurs.

Before founding Forerunner Ventures, Kirsten was an analyst in the equity research department at Banc of America Securities (Montgomery Securities), covering the Specialty Retail sector. After three years in the firm’s research department she was recruited to join an in-house team managing over $800 million in assets, where she was the lead consumer-focused investment professional.

Kirsten graduated from UCLA with a B.A. in Business Economics, and she holds a CPA license and a CFA certification. Kirsten serves on the Board and Executive Committee of the Full Circle Fund, an engaged philanthropic organization that cultivates the next generation of community leaders and drives lasting social change in the Bay Area. She is also on the Advisory Board of Spark, a San Francisco–based nonprofit organization invested in changing the patterns of inequality that affect women throughout the world.

Reid Hoffman is Executive Chairman of LinkedIn Corporation and a Partner at Greylock Partners. In 2003, he co-founded LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional networking service, in his living room. LinkedIn has more than 161 million members in 200 countries and territories around the world. Reid led LinkedIn through its first four years and to profitability as CEO and Chairman.

Reid joined Greylock Partners in 2009. Reid currently serves on the boards of Airbnb, Edmodo, Mozilla (Firefox), Shopkick, Swipely, Wrapp, and Zynga and has co-led investments in Coupons.com, Groupon, and Viki. Reid also leads the Greylock Discovery Fund, which invests in seed stage entrepreneurs and companies. The fund is an extension of Reid’s prior angel investing, which included Facebook, Flickr, Last.fm, and Zynga. Reid focuses on the consumer Internet broadly, including marketplaces, networks, and platforms. Prior to LinkedIn and Greylock, Reid served as executive vice president at PayPal, where he was also a founding board member.

Reid believes strongly in the ability for entrepreneurship and technology to improve the world. Reid serves on the boards of Kiva.org, Endeavor.org, DoSomething.org, and StartupAmericaPartnership.org. Reid also co-authored the best-selling book The Startup of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career.

Reid earned a Master’s degree in Philosophy from Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar, as well as a Bachelor’s degree with distinction in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University. Reid is also the recipient of an SD Forum Visionary Award in 2010 and was named both a Henry Crown Fellow by The Aspen Institute and an Endeavor Entrepreneur of the Year in 2011.

Ben Horowitz is a co-founder and general partner of the venture capital fund, Andreessen Horowitz.

Horowitz was a co-founder and CEO of Opsware (formerly Loudcloud), which was acquired by HP in 2007, and Horowitz was appointed vice president and general manager of Business Technology Optimization for Software at HP. Earlier, he was vice president and general manager of America Online’s E-commerce Platform division, where he oversaw development of the company’s flagship Shop@AOL service.

Previously, Horowitz ran several product divisions at Netscape Communications. Horowitz also served as vice president of Netscape’s widely acclaimed Directory and Security product line. Before joining Netscape in July 1995, he held various senior product marketing positions at Lotus Development Corporation. Horowitz’s blog reflects on the many experiences he’s had throughout his career.

Travis Kalanick is a successful entrepreneur in the areas of consumer internet, transportation, and enterprise content delivery. His most recent company, Uber, an on-demand black car service, seeks to be “Everyone’s Private Driver” by bringing disruptive technology and business innovation to urban transportation challenges. Prior to Uber, Travis founded Red Swoosh, an enterprise content delivery company that he sold to Akamai Technologies in 2007.

Prior companies include Scour, the world’s first p2p search engine where Kalanick also attained the dubious distinction of having been sued for $250 billion. In addition, Kalanick has been an active angel investor in, and advising, kick-ass startups founded by truly awesome entrepreneurs. You can connect with Travis on Twitter @travisk, read his blog, or ask him anything on Formspring.

Chris Kelly was Facebook’s Chief Privacy Officer from September 2005 through August 2009, when he began leave to run for Attorney General in California. He is a board member and investor in LOYAL3, Fandor, GoDigital, Electionear, and many other innovative companies. Chris is trained as an attorney and previously represented many innovative companies on privacy, security, safety and regulatory affairs. In the June 2010 Democratic Attorney General primary, Chris received 16% of the vote in a seven-way race, and returned to technology investing shortly after. Through service as Facebook’s first Chief Privacy Officer, General Counsel, and Head of Global Public Policy, Chris helped build the company from its college roots to a service for everyone and worked with Attorney Generals in all 50 states to develop effective safeguards protecting children from online sexual predators. Georgetown BA in Government and Philosophy; Yale, MA in Political Science; Harvard JD.

Sal Khan is the founder of the Khan Academy, a nonprofit with the mission of providing free, high-quality education for “anyone, anywhere” in the world. Khan graduated from MIT in 1998 with three degrees: two bachelor of science degrees in mathematics and electrical engineering/computer science; and a master of science degree in electrical engineering. He worked in technology in Silicon Valley until the first bubble burst, after which he attended Harvard Business School. After earning a masters degree in business administration in 2003, Khan became an analyst at a Boston based hedge fund.

In 2004 as a side project, Sal began tutoring his young cousin in math, communicating by phone and using an interactive notepad. When others expressed interest, he began posting videos of his hand-scribbled tutorials on YouTube. Demand took off, and in 2009 he quit his day job to commit himself fully to the not-for-profit Khan Academy. The Khan Academy website now provides self-pacing software and unlimited access to over 3,000 instructional videos covering everything from basic arithmetic to college level science and economics. It’s the most-used library of educational videos on the web, with over 5 million unique students per month, over 150 million lessons delivered, and over half a billion exercises completed. Over 10,000 classrooms around the world are also using Khan Academy to help build student mastery of topics and to free up class time for dynamic project based learning.

Khan was recently profiled by 60 Minutes and recognized by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Vinod Khosla was a co-founder of Daisy Systems and founding Chief Executive Officer of Sun Microsystems, where he pioneered open systems and commercial RISC processors. Sun was funded by longtime friend and board member John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

In 1986 Vinod switched sides and joined Kleiner Perkins, where he was and continues to be a general partner of KPCB funds through KP X. Through the years there, with other partners, he took on Intel’s monopoly with Nexgen/AMD (the only microprocessor to have significant success against Intel, sold to AMD for 28 percent of AMD), incubated the idea and business plan for Juniper to take on Cisco’s dominance of the router market, formulated the very early advertising-based search strategy for Excite, and transformed the moribund telecommunications business and its archaic SONET implementations with Cerent (sold to Cisco for $7.4B).

In 2004, Vinod ventured out to create his own venture firm, Khosla Ventures, which invests in a broad portfolio of cleantech, healthtech and infotech startups.

Vinod holds a Bachelor of Technology in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi, a Master’s in Biomedical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

In January 2011, Joel I. Klein became CEO of the Education Division and Executive Vice President, Office of the Chairman, at News Corporation, where he also serves on the Board of Directors. Prior to that, Mr. Klein was Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education where he oversaw a system of over 1,600 schools with 1.1 million students, 136,000 employees and a $22 billion budget. He launched Children First in 2002, a comprehensive reform strategy that has brought coherence and capacity to the system and resulted in significant increases in student performance.

He is a former Chairman and CEO of Bertelsmann, Inc., a media company, and served as Assistant U.S. Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice until September 2000, and was Deputy White House Counsel to President Clinton from 1993-1995. Mr. Klein entered the Clinton administration after 20 years of public and private legal work in Washington, D.C.

Mr. Klein received his BA from Columbia University where he graduated magna cum laude in 1967, and earned his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1971, also graduating magna cum laude. He has received honorary degrees from Amherst College, Columbia University, Dartmouth College, Duke University, Fordham Law School, Georgetown Law Center, Macaulay Honors College at CUNY, Manhattanville College, New York Law School, and St. John’s School of Education. He was selected by Time Magazine as one of Ten People who Mattered in 1999, by U.S. News and World Report as One of America’s 20 Best Leaders in 2006, and was given the prestigious NYU Lewis Rudin Award in 2009 and Manhattan Institute Alexander Hamilton Award in 2011.

Kwindla Hultman Kramer is CEO of Oblong Industries, developer of the g-speak Spatial Operating Environment. Oblong was responsible for the gestural interfaces in the film Minority Report, and the company’s current customers and partners include Boeing, GE, Saudi Aramco and others. Kwin’s background is in programming, hardware design, and the development of large-scale systems architectures. Before helping to start Oblong he served as the founding CTO of AllAfrica.com, one of the web’s largest content aggregators and a two-time webby award nominee. Kwin holds degrees from the MIT Media Laboratory and Harvard College and lives in Los Angeles.

Before joining Google he co-founded Excite, JotSpot, and DigitalConsumer.org. After the acquisition of Jotspot by Google in 2006, Kraus worked on OpenSocial, Google’s effort to develop API standards for social networking platforms.

Joe graduated from Stanford University in 1993 with a BA in Political Science.Aileen LeeFounder, Cowboy Ventures

Aileen Lee is founder of a seed-stage focused fund currently called Cowboy Ventures, announced in July 2012. She is also a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which she joined in 1999. She focuses on working with consumer-oriented digital companies. Aileen has worked closely with the teams at companies such as ShopKick, Zazzle, Bloom Energy, Miasole, Blue Nile (NASDAQ: Nile), Friendster (acquired by MOL Global), Good Technology (acquired by MOT), Tellme (acquired by MSFT). She currently works with companies including Callaway Digital Arts, Dollar Shave Club, One Kings Lane, Plum District, Rent the Runway, True & Company, and RMG Networks (formerly Danoo), where she was founding CEO for two years.

Prior to joining KPCB, Aileen worked at Gap Inc. in various operating roles. She has also worked for Odwalla and for The North Face in brand and product marketing. Aileen began her career at Morgan Stanley in technology mergers & acquisitions.

She has a Bachelor of Science from MIT and an MBA from the Harvard Business School, and is a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute.

Brian Lee, co-founder and CEO of The Honest Company, brings with him an unparalleled expertise in launching successful e-commerce brands that leverage technology and social media to provide consumers with a highly customized, informational, and entertaining Internet experience. Founding ShoeDazzle in 2008, Brian perfected this innovative business model while serving the company’s more than three million members and one million Facebook fans. Forbes Magazine ranked ShoeDazzle as number 21 on its Most Promising Companies 2011 list. Brian also co-founded LegalZoom in 2001, an online consumer legal services company that has grown into a $150 MM+/year business and was ranked number 27 as the World’s Most Valuable Startups by Business Insider in 2011. Brian was formerly an attorney with Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, LLP and a former Manager at Deloitte & Touche, LLP before eventually earning the distinction as one of the 25 most notable Korean-American entrepreneurs by Forbes Magazine in 2009. Brian graduated Magna Cum Laude with a B.A. in Economics/Business from UCLA and received his J.D. from UCLA School of Law.

David Lee is the Managing Member at SV Angel, where Ron Conway is a Special Partner. SV Angel focuses its investments on early-stage consumer media companies.

He focuses on investments within the consumer Internet, mobile, video and other IT industries. Prior to SV Angel, he was at Google, where he led new business development efforts in video, media and content/data partnerships. After Google, he led all business development-related efforts for StumbleUpon.

Recently he was a partner at Baseline Ventures and also an attorney at Morrison and Foerster representing high-tech companies in commercial transactions. He is a graduate of Johns Hopkins, NYU (JD) and Stanford (MSEE), where he was a National Science Foundation Graduate fellow. He is an individual investor in Square, WePay, Chomp and EQAL; an adviser at ScanScout, SocialDeck (acq. by Google) and Rupture (acq. by EA); and was on the board of directors of BookFresh (acq. by Sugar Inc.).

Edwin M. Lee, 59, was sworn in on January 8, 2012 as the 43rd Mayor of the City and County of San Francisco. Lee is the first Asian-American mayor in San Francisco history. Lee was elected on November 8, 2011 by the people of San Francisco while he was serving as Interim Mayor, appointed unanimously as successor mayor by the Board of Supervisors on January 11, 2011 to fill the remaining year of former Mayor Gavin Newsom’s term who was sworn in as California’s Lieutenant Governor.

While serving as Interim Mayor, Lee championed balancing the budget to keep San Francisco safe, solvent and successful, reforming City pensions, economic development, job creation and public safety as his top priorities. Mayor Lee has worked hard to keep the economy and economic recovery on track, create jobs for residents and everything that supports a thriving economic climate like parks, transit, housing, quality of life in neighborhoods and public safety. In the current term, Mayor Lee will keep his focus on economic development and job creation, taking responsibility for building San Francisco’s future, taking responsibility for helping each other and making City government more responsive, efficient and accountable through innovation and technology. This is what it will take to keep San Francisco a thriving, diverse, dynamic city of great neighborhoods, but also one that is a global hub for innovation and new economy industries.

In 2010, Mayor Lee was appointed to a second term as City Administrator by Mayor Newsom and his appointment was confirmed unanimously by the Board of Supervisors. As City Administrator, Mayor Lee spearheaded government efficiency measures and reforms that reduced the size and cost of government, from reducing the vehicle fleet to consolidating departments and back office functions to save tax dollars. He implemented the City’s move to cleaner vehicles and an infrastructure to support electric vehicles and green City government. Mayor Lee also developed and oversaw implementation of the City’s first ever Ten Year Capital Plan to guide our capital priorities and infrastructure investment.

Aaron Levie co-founded Box with friend and Box CFO Dylan Smith in 2005. The Box mission is to provide businesses and individuals with the simplest solution to share, access and manage their information. Aaron is the visionary behind Box’s product and platform strategy, which is focused on incorporating the best of traditional content management with an elegant, easy to use user experience suited to the way people collaborate and work today. Box is one of the fastest growing companies in enterprise software, used by more than 11 million individuals and 120,000 businesses worldwide.

Aaron is a tireless advocate of innovation and disruption in the technology industry, and he has spoken at numerous events, including Fortune Brainstorm Tech, Dreamforce, LeWeb, RSA, MobileBeat, GigaOm Structure, and DEMO. In addition, he has written several articles for major publications such as CNN, the BBC, Fast Company, Forbes, PandoDaily and TechCrunch.

Aaron studied business at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California before leaving to found Box.

Ellen Levy recently joined the management team of professional social networking site LinkedIn as the head of Corporate Development & Strategy, having been on the Advisory Board for the past five years. In addition, she is the founding Managing Director of Silicon Valley Connect, working with large corporations and entrepreneurs on opportunities for innovation; and is the Network Advisor to global venture firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

Before founding Silicon Valley Connect, Ellen spent two years running a groundbreaking program at Stanford University, facilitating collaboration between industry partners, Silicon Valley, and the University research community by championing questions having to do with people, technology & innovation. Today, Ellen focuses much of her time on issues pertaining to the Consumer Internet, the dynamics/implications of social networks, innovation ecosystems and supporting organizational models.

Alfred is a venture capitalist at Sequoia Capital. He currently sits on the board of Humble Bundle and Stella & Dot and works with consumer Internet, enterprise and mobile companies.

Previously, Alfred was Chairman and COO/CFO at Zappos. He joined Zappos in 2005 and was responsible for all financial, administrative, and warehouse operations. Alfred focused on bringing focus, strategy and financial discipline in order to grow the business efficiently and profitably. Prior to joining Zappos, Alfred served as VP of Finance and Business Development at Tellme Networks, helping grow that business from no revenue to over $120M in recurring revenue per year, 30% cash margins and a $0.5B estimated contracted revenue backlog.

Prior to joining Tellme Networks, Alfred co-founded Venture Frogs with Tony Hsieh. Venture Frogs is an incubator and investment firm that backed Internet startups, including Ask Jeeves, Tellme Networks, and of course, Zappos.com. Prior to Venture Frogs, Alfred served as VP of Finance and Administration at LinkExchange, where he managed the sale of the Company to Microsoft for $265M. Alfred met Tony Hsieh (Zappos CEO) in college, when Tony was running a pizza business and Alfred was his #1 customer.

Previously as a VP at Google, Marissa Mayer lead the product management and engineering efforts of Google’s local, mobile, and contextual discovery products including Google Maps, Google Maps for Mobile, Local Search, Google Earth, Street View, Latitude and more. At 36 years old, she was also the youngest member of Google’s executive operating committee. During her 12 years at Google, Marissa led product management and design efforts for Google web search, images, news, books, products, toolbar, and iGoogle. She started at Google in 1999 as Google’s 20th employee and first woman engineer.

Marissa’s contributions and leadership have been recognized by numerous publications including the New York Times, Newsweek and BusinessWeek. Fortune magazine has listed her for the past 3 years on their annual Most Powerful Women’s list, and she was the youngest ever to appear on the list. In 2010 Marissa was honored by the New York Women in Communications, Inc. with a Matrix Award. She also been named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and Woman of the Year by Glamour Magazine. Marissa serves on the board of various non-profits, including the Smithsonian National Design Museum, the New York City Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Prior to joining Google, Mayer worked at the UBS research lab (Ubilab) in Zurich, Switzerland, and at SRI International in Menlo Park, California. Marissa received her B.S. in Symbolic Systems and her M.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University. For both degrees, she specialized in artificial intelligence.

Todd McKinnon is the CEO of Okta, a company he co-founded in 2009 with the mission of empowering businesses to realize the full benefits of their cloud-based applications. Okta helps companies of all sizes get control of their users, applications and data – both in the cloud and behind the firewall – and provides end-users with one place from which they can access all applications, from any device, anywhere.

From 2003 to 2009, Todd worked at Salesforce.com leading the engineering, user interface design, documentation and localization teams. Under Todd’s leadership, the team grew from 15 to more than 250 people, and the Salesforce.com service grew from 3 million transactions per day to more-than 150 million with industry-leading performance and reliability. Todd’s team developed and launched Force.com, the industry’s first platform-as-a-service product, and AppExchange, the first online marketplace for cloud computing applications.

From 1995 to 2003, Todd worked in various engineering and leadership roles at PeopleSoft in the PeopleTools group, building the underlying platform for the company’s applications.

Zac Moffatt is currently the Digital Director for Mitt Romney for President where he oversees digital strategy, online advertising, email marketing and online fundraising for the campaign. Before joining the Mitt Romney campaign Zac founded, along with Michael Beach, Targeted Victory, a full service interactive advertising agency that has quickly grown into serving over 100+ federal and national clients including the Republican National Committee, Marco Rubio for Senate and FedEx. Prior to founding Targeted Victory Zac served as the Deputy Director for Statewide efforts at Freedoms Watch, the RNC Director of Political Education and the Victory Director for the Maryland Republican Party for Governor Robert Ehrlich and Senate candidate Michael Steele. He has also served on campaigns in NY, OR and RI as well as at the 55th Presidential Inaugural Committee and the 2004 Republican National Convention. Prior to the Convention, Zac served as the Associate Chief of Staff for Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City following the Mayor’s successful election in 2001.

Alison Moore is senior vice president, Digital Products, for Home Box Office, responsible for overseeing the consumer experience, content development and operation of HBO’s multiplatform digital products: HBO/MAX GO, HBO.com, Cinemax.com, HBO Social Media platforms, HBO/MAX On Demand and Affiliate Products. Moore was named to this position in July 2010.

Moore first joined HBO as a marketing manager in 1995, responsible for developing promotional marketing programs with affiliate partners. She left the company in 1999, returning to HBO in 2003 as director, Brand Development. She was promoted to vice president, Brand Strategy and Digital Platforms in May 2006, overseeing HBO’s consumer websites, online video, social and promotional platforms, as well as HBO’s brand advertising and promotional strategy.

Brit Morin is the founder of ‘Brit’. Brit is a hybrid media and technology company that provides apps, products and ideas for creative living. The goal is to show people how to add order to the chaos of their daily lives in a fun, easy and elegant way.

Brit currently operates a content site online at Brit.co, and also designs and builds software applications, the first of which is Weduary.com, a new social wedding website creation service for brides and grooms.

Dave is an entrepreneur. Today, he is the Co-Founder and CEO of Path, the modern journal that helps you stay connected with family & close friends. Previously, he was an early member of the Facebook team where he spent several years working to make the Internet more social by contributing to Facebook Platform and Facebook Connect. Prior to Facebook, he spent several years learning design thinking and marketing while working at Apple.

Dave received a degree in Economics and Business from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Dave has been a featured speaker at universities, conferences, and panels worldwide including South by Southwest, Future of Web Apps, Web 2.0 Summit, Fast Company Innovation Uncensored, Le Web, Stanford, MIT, and the University of Colorado at Boulder.

As an early stage product and markets guy, Ron launched a number of highly innovative companies, including Grand Central/Google Voice, OpenDNS, Scout Labs and Swivel as managing director of Minor Ventures.

As founder of MkII Ventures, Ron cofounded Prism Skylabs which is working to brings physical spaces online, creating new places for people and businesses to understand and engage each other.

David Prager is an advisor and investor in consumer Internet and media technology companies including Yardsale, XDN, and Zuckerberg Media. He is also a co-host and frequent guest on various technology and culture-based web shows and podcasts.

As a pioneer in the emerging medium of Internet video-on-demand programming, Prager co-founded Internet television network Revision3 with Jay Adelson and Kevin Rose in 2005. Throughout various periods during his 7 year tenure at Revision3, he managed multiple aspects of the business including finance and operations, business development, distribution, sales, and programming. Revision3 was sold to Discovery Communications in June 2012.

Prior to Revision3, Prager was a seasoned television producer, journalist, and technology writer at such reputable outlets as ZDTV, TechTV and Comcast’s G4 Media, amassing hundreds of hours of live daily production, documentary and field productions under his belt.

Kevin Rose is a Venture Partner at Google Ventures, where he primarily focuses on early-stage and seed investments.

Prior to joining Google Ventures, Kevin co-founded Milk, a mobile application development company in San Francisco. Previously Kevin was the founder of Digg, and co-founder of Revision3, and Pownce (acquired by Six Apart). In addition, Rose is the founder of Foundation, a private newsletter and podcast, and formerly was co-host of the tech news podcast Diggnation.

Justin Rosenstein is the co-founder of Asana, along with Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz. Asana’s software enables organizations to coordinate their people and teams without effort, providing key communication infrastructure to companies like Twitter, Airbnb, and Foursquare.

Justin has led the development of products that hundreds of millions of people use daily. At Facebook, he was the tech lead for projects including the Like button and Facebook Pages, and designed the in-house project management system that Facebook relies on to this day Facebook. At Google, he product-managed several projects in the communication/collaboration division, and created the initial prototype for Gmail Chat.

Justin majored in Math and got part way through a Master’s in Computer Science at Stanford.

David O. Sacks is the Founder and CEO of Yammer, Inc. Sacks was previously the COO of PayPal until its acquisition by eBay. Subsequently, he founded Geni.com, a family tree building and networking website. He also produced and financed the hit movie Thank You For Smoking. David recently sold Yammer to Microsoft for $1.2 billion.

David holds a B.A. in Economics from Stanford University and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School.

Ruchi Sanghvi is the Head of Operations at Dropbox. Prior to joining Dropbox, Sanghvi served as the co-founder and CEO of Cove, a collaboration, coordination and communication product for organizations and communities.

Sanghvi holds the distinction of being the first female engineer at Facebook and was instrumental in implementing the first versions of key features such as News Feed. She then led product management and strategy for Facebook Platform and Facebook Connect. She was also responsible for core product areas such as privacy and user engagement.

Sanghvi is also the recipient of the prestigious TechFellow award for engineer leadership and was interviewed by Huffington Post regarding the challenges of being a female engineer.

Barry Schneider is Chairman & CEO of LOYAL3. Barry has over 30 years experience in investing in and leading high growth companies. Previously he was Chairman & CEO of MacGregor Golf Company; Chairman & CEO of MSA Industries which was sold to DuPont in 1996 and the Managing Partner at The Parkside Group, LLC. LOYAL3 has developed a web and social media platform that enables public companies to sell their stock directly to customers on their Facebook page or website to create more loyal consumers. This highly scalable platform is called a Customer Stock Ownership Plan, or CSOP™. The company is committed to democratizing the market, creating a deeper and more emotional connection between brands and their consumers. UCLA BA.

MG Siegler is a general partner at CrunchFund and a columnist for TechCrunch, where he has been writing since 2009. His focus is on Apple.

Prior to TechCrunch, MG covered various technology beats for VentureBeat.

Originally from Ohio, MG attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI. He’s previously lived in Los Angeles where he worked in Hollywood and in San Diego where he worked in web development. He also writes at his own blog, ParisLemon, and tweets a lot.

James Slavet is a partner at Greylock. His primary areas of investment focus are e-commerce, online advertising, and Web-enabled consumer services. James’ investments include Auditude, Groupon, High Gear Media, One Kings Lane, Redfin, Revision3 and TellApart.

He previously represented Greylock in its investments in Farecast (acquired by Microsoft) and Kongregate (acquired by Gamestop). His complete profile can be found at LinkedIn here.

Joel Simkhai is founder & CEO of Grindr, the worlds largest all-male mobile location based social network. Joel was born in Tel Aviv in 1976, and at the age of three he emigrated from Israel with his family to New York, where he was raised. In 1998, he attended Tufts University, earning his Bachelor of Arts degree in a double major of International Relations and Economics. Joel then went on to work in several different fields, from finance to a news desk to a start-up, before starting his own Internet marketing firm in 2003. After establishing his business, Joel decided to move to Los Angeles for a change of scenery in March 2008. It was here in 2008 that the capability for Joel to create Grindr occurred.

Throughout his life and career, Joel had always been looking for a better way to meet the people around him. After countless missed connections and lost opportunities, he decided there must be a better way to find new people and friends around. With the announcement of the second-generation iPhone, combining GPS technology and application development for the mobile platform, the pieces came together and created the perfect combination to achieve Joel’s idea. In March 2009, Grindr was launched and has been going strong ever since.

Rahul Sood is the General Manager of Bing Fund, an angel fund with an incubator program that is backed by Microsoft’s Online Services Division.

Sood joined Microsoft in January of 2011 as a GM in the interactive entertainment business at Microsoft. He created Bing Fund in February 2012.

A serial entrepreneur, Sood spent 16 years in multiple startups prior to joining Microsoft. He founded luxury and gaming computer manufacturer VoodooPC, which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in September of 2006. Voodoo brought the ENVY product line to HP, contributing advanced technologies, such as commercial liquid cooling, and an increased focus on design.

Sood is a co-founder of BrightSquid Medical, a collaboration platform for medical professionals, which was subsequently acquired by NetworksMD. He co-founded BrightSquid Dental, which was spun out of the medical business in 2010. Sood also created BullsOnWallstreet, a trading and education platform for retail investors and traders, and he is an active angel investor in a number of small Canadian-based energy companies.

Tim Stevens is Editor-in-chief of Engadget. He got his start writing professionally in the mid ’90s, covering the gaming world while in college, and has since written on topics including business process management, software development, and of course lots and lots about gadgets. He formerly had a successful career as an Enterprise Software Architect. He’s an avid gamer, amateur motorsports enthusiast, lover of most outdoor activities, and proud creator of the first (and
possibly only) two-player game for the Sega VMU.

As a progenitor of the early social web, Biz became an Internet entrepreneur in 1999 and went on to work for Google. Later, Stone co-founded Twitter which launched in 2006. In June of 2011, Stone co-founded The Obvious Corporation to focus on building systems that help people work together to improve the world.

An adamant believer that when we help others, we also help ourselves, Stone supports a new way of doing business with a higher level of ambition, and a better, more altruistic way to measure success. Beyond immediate needs, Stone advocates selflessness; insisting we follow this path in order to deliver deeper meaning in our work and in so doing, place value before profit.

Along with his wife, Livia, Stone was named a Huffington Post Game Changer for their work and impact in the field of public service. Together, the couple operate The Biz and Livia Stone Foundation supporting education and conservation in California.

Biz lives in Marin County, California with his wife Livia and son Jacob.

Mark joined GRP Partners in 2007 after having worked with GRP for nearly 8 years as a two-time entrepreneur. Most recently Mark was Vice President, Product Management at Salesforce.com (NASDAQ: CRM) following its acquisition of Koral,where Mark was Founder and CEO. Prior to Koral, Mark was Founder and CEO of BuildOnline, the largest independent global content collaboration company focused on the engineering and construction sectors, which was acquired by SWORD Group (PARIS: SWP). Earlier in his career, Mark spent nearly ten years working for Accenture in Europe, Japan and the U.S.

Mark received a BA in Economics from the University of California, San Diego, and an MBA from the University of Chicago. He is a dual citizen of the US and the UK. Mark founded Launchpad LA, a program designed to help mentor LA’s most promising first-time startup CEO’s. He runs the Southern California Venture Capital Alliance (VCA) and is on the board of advisors for the venture capital fund of the UCSD Rady School of Business. Mark sits on the Boards of RingRevenue, GumGum and Ad.ly. He was formerly on the boards of EMN8, Qualys, Koral and BuildOnline.

John leads Oblong’s technological vision. His foundational work at the MIT Media Laboratory included innovations in real-time computer graphics systems, large-scale visualization techniques, and the I/O Bulb and Luminous Room systems. He has been science advisor to films including Minority Report, The Hulk (A.Lee), Aeon Flux, and Iron Man. John is also active on several boards and serves as adjunct professor in the USC School of Cinematic Arts.

Scott Weiss is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz. Formerly, he was co-founder and CEO of IronPort Systems, which was acquired by Cisco in 2007. While at Cisco, Weiss was the vice president and general manager of the Security Technology Group. Previously, he was also a managing director and entrepreneur-in-residence at IdeaLab, where he met IronPort co-founder Scott Banister. Prior to IdeaLab, Weiss was employee no. 13 at Hotmail and was responsible for all partnership and revenue generating business development efforts. After Hotmail’s acquisition by Microsoft, Weiss led a business development team within the MSN division. Before joining Hotmail, Weiss was a consultant at McKinsey & Company. He also worked at EDS for five years.

Weiss holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA from the University of Florida. He blogs at http://scott.a16z.com.

Evan Williams is an American entrepreneur who has co-founded two of the biggest services on the Internet: Blogger (one of the first and largest blogging applications, which he ran for four years before selling to Google in 2003) and Twitter, at which he was the CEO for two years and now serves on the board of directors.

Evan was raised on a farm in rural Nebraska and has been recognized as one of Inc. Magazine’s Entrepreneurs of the Decade, one of the 100 most influential people in the world, according to TIME, and named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.

Evan is currently CEO of The Obvious Corporation, which spun out Twitter, Inc. in 2007. Today, Obvious is working on fostering systems that help people work together to improve their lives and the world.

Richard joined Accel in 2006, with an interest in software, mobile and internet services, and energy technologies. Rich led Accel’s investment in Angry Birds (Rovio) and serves on the boards of Atlassian, the leader in software for streamlining product development; SunRun, the leading provider of residential solar power; MoPub, a leader in mobile ad platforms; Qwilt, a provider of video optimization technology; Getjar Networks, the largest mobile development community and open mobile app store; Parature, a leader in SaaS based customer support. Rich previously led Accel’s investment and served on the Board of Admob (acquired by Google), as well as 3LM – Three Laws of Mobility, an Android enterprise startup (acquired by Motorola Mobility).

Prior to Accel, Rich was SVP/GM of Products at Openwave and previously GM of Messaging Products, and Chief Marketing Officer at Openwave. While at Openwave, Rich founded and chaired the Messaging Anti Abuse Working Group, a consortium of ISPs and technology providers working together to combat internet abuse.

An Emmy Award-winning television director for top shows including Lost, Heroes, Grey’s Anatomy and House, Yaitanes was an early angel investor in Twitter, Square, Pinterest and Foursquare, among others.

But Yaitanes is better known for his day job as showrunner for Alan Ball’s upcoming show Banshee, which is slated to premiere on Cinemax in 2013.

George joined Charles River in 2004 with 20+ years of operating and investing experience in computing and consumer technology. George’s focus is on building consumer internet and infrastructure companies. Previously, he was a general partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures (MDV).

Prior to MDV, George led the Nintendo 64 development business at Silicon Graphics, managed sales and marketing for virtual reality pioneer VPL Research, and served as a product marketer at CATS Software. He is on the board of Stanford SSE, Stanford’s StartX, and is an advisor to the X PRIZE Foundation. George earned a joint BS from MIT and MIT Sloan School of Business (1987).

John is the Co-Founder and COO of Zimride & Lyft. John (luckily) left Lehman Brothers in early 2008, where he spent two years after graduating from Cornell University’s Hotel School. He moved from New York City to Palo Alto in July of 2008 by using Zimride to carpool across America.

John and Zimride have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and on ABC World News. He was recognized by BusinessWeek in 2009 as one of ‘America’s Best Young Entrepreneur’s 25 and under’.

Since 2007, John has lead Zimride’s business development efforts forging over 150 university and corporate clients, as well as exclusive partnerships with Zipcar and Facebook. His favorite Zimride is San Francisco to Los Angeles and his favorite Lyft is from home to work.

Lior Zorea is a Partner in the Menlo Park office and a member of the firm’s Emerging Companies practice group. Lior has a corporate and securities law practice encompassing venture capital, debt and other private financings, public offerings, mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance and general business counseling. Lior focuses on representing emerging growth technology companies and their founders in the information technology space including the internet, software, digital media and semiconductor sectors.

Mark is the chairman and CEO of Facebook, which he founded in 2004. He is responsible for setting the overall direction and product strategy for the company, leading the design of Facebook’s service and the development of its core technology and infrastructure. Mark studied computer science at Harvard University before moving the company to Palo Alto, California.